


No One

by Kaiyou



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Curses, Fantasy, Fated loves, Knights - Freeform, M/M, Magic, Side kage/hina, Some bullying, fairy tale, some violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-28 09:58:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8441278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaiyou/pseuds/Kaiyou
Summary: “If Kei loves no one, then no one will be safe.”Tsukishima Kei first hears those words when he is six years old, but they are written in flowing script on a pendant he wears every day of his life, the mark of his fate. It's supposed to be his destiny, a way to help him find his one true love - but to Kei, the words are a curse.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So I wanted to write something at least a little magicy for Halloween. This got away from me a little bit, but I'm still quite pleased with it.
> 
> 10/2- made some edits, minor changes/expansions to some things. plz let me know if i screwed anything up! ^_^

“But what does that even mean!” the duke yelled.

“I don’t know, sire, it’s probably nothing....”

“Nothing? You’re the one who convinced me this antiquated tradition was necessary -”

“This is how it’s done, sire. If your brother-in-law thought you hadn’t -”

“Oh, just because he thinks it’s a good idea to do for his son - and look what it got him! Some nonsense rhyme about a falling sun! But now this, with both of my sons - I want that woman locked up until she explains what this idiocy means!”

Kei curled back against his brother, clutching the worn stuffed dragon he carried to his chest. He didn’t know what to make of all the shouting. He’d asked Akiteru a few times, but his older brother knew nothing either. It was so confusing. His father shouting wasn’t anything new, but his mother looked terribly distraught, and the strange woman was just sitting here in the center of the receiving room, smile on her face even as his father threatened to have her thrown in the deepest pit.

All because of the gifts she’d given them.

Kei tugged on the ribbon around his neck, pulling out the bronze circle and trying to make out the letters etched into its surface.

“What does it say again?” he asked, turning to look up at Akiteru.

The smile Akiteru gave him in response was strained. “If Kei loves no one, then no one will be safe,” he said. “That’s not so bad, is it? You love lots of people! I’m sure it will be fine. Hey, at least you didn’t get one like mine.”

“What’s it say?”

“A knight even stronger than yourself,” Akiteru said.

“That’s who you’re supposed to fall in love with?”

“Yeah,” Akiteru murmured.

“Well, that’s alright. Knights are cool, right? They’re heroes, like in all the books.”

“Yeah, Kei,” Akiteru answered, laugh a little shaky as he glanced across the room towards the group of children they normally played with. Kei knew who he was looking at - the loud, brash blonde currently yelling at her younger brother and his friend with the crazy hair. Kei might’ve been young, but he knew his brother stayed up late scratching poems for the girl.

He never gave them to her, though.

Frowning, Kei pat his arm. “It’ll be ok,” he said.

“Sure it will, Kei,” Akiteru answered, smile soft as he looked down. “Sure it will.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Twelve years passed since that fateful summer day when their fortunes had been read. Saeko, the blonde, had run off with her brother and two of his friends three years after that, supposedly because her brother’s friends had broken one of Kei’s mother’s prize vases.

Kei was pretty sure Akiteru still missed her. Their family had all traveled to the capitol to attend the king’s yearly tournament, special because it was a celebration of the prince’s fifteenth birthday. Kei hadn’t been all that interested, other than the fact that Akiteru was finally competing this time. Personally, Kei thought it was a stupid idea. His brother belonged in the library, not out on a battlefield, and everyone knew it. However, Akiteru was his father’s heir, and considered past the age to show at the tournament.

Their father had invited Kei to participate as well - he’d been training for years, and their master at arms said he was fair in a fight. He hadn’t wanted to embarrass his brother, however. Also, there were all the whispers.

So he had bowed out.

A nameless band of knights were competing that year. None of them took off their helmets except their leader, some strange lord named Daichi, who was attempting to prove his worth . To Kei’s eye he seemed young, but he handled himself well, even if one of his so-called knights seemed the size of a page.

“I don’t see why Akiteru has to fight some no-name,” their father said.

Kei stiffened, hand automatically reaching up to touch the flat disk of metal resting against his chest. He knew it was stupid. Knew it meant nothing. Still, even a simple phrase could remind him of the curse.

Evidently, it wasn’t just him, either. A few courtiers glanced at him and whispered, edging away from him. Kei grit his jaw and ignored them, glancing down as his mother came close and took his arm. “Don’t pay them any mind,” she whispered, patting his arm. “Who knows, maybe your brother will find true love here, right?”

Ducking his head, Kei hid his smile. Trust his mother to find something positive in her son’s fortunes. Their father never did. He outright refused to accept Akiteru’s fortune, railing that no heir of his would be involved with a man. Their priest vacillated between condemning the fortunes as baseless superstition and telling stories about a king who loved his commander more than a brother. Their advisor tried to bring up stories of people whose fortunes had led them to their best friends not their true loves, but no one was really convinced. Rumors abounded. Kei knew half the reason Akiteru avoided the barracks was to stay away from so-called knights who kept trying to convince him that they were the one, seeking power by becoming the lover to a duke-to-be.

It was easy to understand why Akiteru spent most of his time in the library.

Still, those rumors were mere annoyance compared to the things people whispered about Kei.

“No one will be safe.”

Those words that haunted him.

Oh, at first it hadn’t been so bad. He’d had a ton of people kissing up to him when he was younger. Girls threw themselves at him, since it seemed that Akiteru was off limits to the ‘fairer’ sex. At first Kei had been mildly amused, but by the time he turned ten he’d learned that women could be terrifying. If Akiteru kept to the library to avoid randy suitors, a big reason Kei had any proficiency with a blade was because he kept to the training grounds to avoid the girls.

Then came the accident when he was twelve, when one of the squires failed to secure the stall door on their father’s horse. It got out, trampling a poor stable boy and breaking his leg. The squire had claimed that he hadn’t done anything wrong. He blamed it on Kei’s curse, said the reason the accident happened was because Kei had been grooming his horse in the next stall.

Of course, his plan hadn’t worked. The squire’s father still had to pay for the treatment of the poor boy, and the squire had been sent home in disgrace. But his friends hadn’t been happy and had turned downright nasty as the years progressed and they found more and more things to blame on Kei.

The thing about rumors, Kei had found, was that trying to deny them just made them worse.

Still, his mother stood by him, and Akiteru as well. Kei was pretty sure that their father could’ve squelched the rumors if anyone could, but always, always, there was just the tiniest sliver of doubt in his eyes as he looked at his youngest son.

He’d learned to ignore them all. None of them mattered. No one but his mother and Akiteru.

He held his mother close to him as they watched the riders line up, lances in hand. Akiteru’s opponent wasn’t too big, but he was wearing the same black-painted armor as the rest of Daichi’s crows.

Anxiety crept up suddenly. He wanted to take Akiteru’s place. Something was off, he didn’t know what, but something felt strange. Was it the grip Akiteru had on his shield? Was his hand shaking on the lance? Kei was suddenly reminded of how dangerous jousting was. Akiteru should’ve bowed out. Faked some injury in one of the earlier events. Anything could happen here - the lance could hit his armor and slip up under his helmet, he could break a leg falling off the horse if he was unseated, anything. Fear gripped Kei in the seconds that passed as the two horses charged at each other, a million questions, self-doubt - what if no one really was safe around him?

No. It would be fine. It would be fine.

His mother let out a scream as the lance hit dead center in Akiteru’s armor and he was thrown off the hours and onto the ground.

Kei’s fingers dug into the handrail in front of them as he leaned forward, heart in his throat.

Akiteru was moving.

Akiteru was moving, scrambling, trying to stand and falling back to the ground, weighed down by all the stupid armor. Still, he was alive. He still had his sword, he could fight -

The black knight was there, sword in hand, pressing its tip to Akiteru’s chest.

“Yield!” the knight yelled. It was the first time Kei had heard him.

Wait.

Why did the voice sound familiar?

“Yield! Say it! Say I’m stronger than you!”

For a moment, Kei wanted to vault over the railing and fight the person who seemed to know about Akiteru’s curse and wanted to use it against him - but something stopped him. Something like his brother tugging his helmet off, yelling something that Kei couldn’t hear with a look of crazy hope on his face.

Kei couldn’t hear anything because everyone around them was yelling, pressing forward as the black knight tugged off his helmet to reveal a shock of blond hair and a face -

Oh.

Smiling, Kei had a single moment of clarity where he realized that not all fortunes were curses. Not if the looks being shared between Akiteru and Saeko were anything to go by. Glancing down, he wondered if his mother had known.

Then someone shoved into him from behind and he felt the railing in his hand give way.

It wasn’t a long drop. Just a few feet. He turned, instinctively pulling his mother to him, cradling her in the milliseconds before pain shot up his back.

He sucked in a breath, looking up at the blue sky.

Then he looked down at the form in his arms. “Mother?” he asked. “Mother?”

She was shaking. Shaking was a good sign, right? She was shaking, but there was blood -

“I”m fine,” she whispered. “I”m fine.”

Someone - one of his father’s knights, he realized - pushed his way through the crowd and pulled them apart, yelling for a healer.

The blood wasn’t his.

Kei stared, ignored as everyone came and surrounded his mother, yelling about the shaft of wood that had somehow lodged itself in her arm.

It was just a gash and a broken arm. Nothing serious. She would be fine. He was fine. Everyone would be fine -

“No one is safe,” someone whispered, he didn’t know who.

He turned his head to see who’d spoken but no one was looking at him, at least not directly. They were backing off, murmuring, glancing from him to the broken railing to him with suspicion.

“Kei!” Akiteru yelled, coming up behind him and kneeling down. He was still half in his armor, Kei noticed. “Are you hurt? Are you injured? We came as fast as we could! We saw the railing give way - Kei if you hadn’t been there to catch her - thank God you’re safe!”

No, Kei thought, looking down at a doublet stained red with his mother’s blood. No, he wasn’t safe.

No one was.

~~~~~~

“Stupid!” one voice yelled across the camp.

“Dumbass!” answered another, with a less than princely tone.

At the moment, Kei was seriously reconsidering every single one of his life choices. If this was what love was like, he was almost glad that he seemed fated to never have it.

“Honestly, you two should just go back to the castle,” Kei said, rubbing his forehead. “We beat the bandits, who really cares if -”

He stopped, watching as his cousin was plowed into by the crazy redheaded knight who was supposed to be his one true love. Sighing, Kei turned around on the log he was sitting on, not wanting to see if their scuffle turned into something more intimate. Bad enough he had to sleep across the campfire from them.

Life had changed in the two years since the tournament. Saeko and his brother had ended up getting married, of course. It turned out their father wasn’t nearly as bothered by the idea of having a daughter-in-law who could wield a sword as he might have been, even if the priest was a bit outraged. He had not-so-subtly arranged for Kei to go train at the castle with the king, though, claiming it was for his own good. Kei knew it was because he didn’t want Kei’s curse to jeopardize the new family, though. His mother had healed up fine, but the whispers persisted.

He’d hoped they wouldn’t follow him to the castle. For a few months, no one had paid too much attention to him. They were still dealing with the shock of the prince’s lover - Daichi’s tiny knight, who’d been unhorsed by the prince at the tournament. His helmet had been knocked off by the fall, and everyone had gasped at his shock of bright red hair. Even Kageyama had been struck dumb as his fortune came true in front of his eyes, though his fallen sun had won the match, scrambling to his feet and brandishing his sword at the motionless prince.

If only things had stayed that silent.

Sighing, Kei looked up at the morning sky.

He lifted a hand to his chest, tapping against the circle. Akiteru’s had, of course, cleared to crystal upon finding Saeko and claiming her - or well, being claimed. Kageyama wore his own clear crystal proudly, proof against anyone else who tried to make the claim that Hinata was an unsuitable lover for a prince. 

Kei had tried his best to find his own fated love. He’d danced with courtly ladies, fallen into a couple of affairs, even let himself be romanced by a beautiful dark-haired knight. He read romance novels even though he hated them. He wrote poetry. He did everything he could think of to fall in love.

Nothing worked. The ladies were fake, their soft curves and overbearing scents did nothing but give him a headache. Akaashi had ended one of their nights together by haltingly confessing his love for another man, and Kei had done his best to help them get together. All around him his friends were falling in love and pairing up, and Kei had no one. He loved his friends. He even loved his brash, idiotic cousin and his crazy redheaded lover. Daichi and his knights had vowed loyalty to the king, and had ended up accepting Kei as one of their unit - but even still. They were friends. Comrades.

No matter how much he loved them, that wasn’t the love that would the bronze circle clear. He was fairly certain by now that nothing ever would. He wasn’t the only one.

The rumors had started back up after Sugawara had slipped in the mud while they were sparring. He’d been fine, but the sword they were using had been driven into the ground right next to his face, cutting his cheek. Sugawara thought nothing of it, but some of the men watching had remembered the accident at the tournament, and one of the ladies Kei had romanced suddenly remembered his curse. Soon, the halls were buzzing.

Accidents happen all the time in training. Nothing worse than a woman scorned, Sugawara had said, trying to comfort him.

He hadn’t scorned her.

It wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t fall in love with her.

But things had just gone downhill from there.

His friends supported him, but soon every little accident or illness was somehow laid at his doorstep. Bad soup, stillborn foals, even the fact that a storm washed out the bridge south of the castle’s city. The queen falling ill had been the last straw. She’d been like a second mother to him, kind and gentle, letting him hide in her gardens when the weight of everyone’s words got too much. That afternoon Kei had made up his mind to just leave, get away in case the rumors were true. He had meant to slip out in the night with none the wiser.

Of course, Hinata had ruined that, catching him and making him swear to wait while he got Kageyama.

Now he was stuck with the prince and his lover as bodyguards. The people back at the castle probably thought he’d kidnapped them or something. It could’ve been worse - they could’ve had the whole company riding with them. That wouldn’t’ve been inconspicuous at all. As it was, the two lovebirds stuck to him like glue, and thought it was a grand adventure to be sneaking across the countryside.

“I’m going for a walk,” Kei finally said, glancing back and instantly regretting it. Certain parts of Hinata’s anatomy he most certainly did not need to be familiar with. Sighing, he walked away before things got truly noisy.

They weren’t that far from a village, but Kei kept to the edge of the forest, not really wanting to deal with people. Villagers back home were the worst. Most of them feared nobles anyway - not that Kei really blamed them; his father was not the nicest of landlords. The rumors of Kei’s curse tended to go before him, though, enough that children were pulled into houses and farmers clutched their pitchforks close as he rode by.

Lonely.

More than anything, he mused, it made him lonely.

He sighed, leaning against a tree by the path. He was so tired of being cast as the monster, the one who brought nothing but bad fortune. He wished he could just throw the curse away. He’d tried when he was younger, thrown it into the river, into the trash, but every morning when he woke it returned to his neck, clean as before, an ever-present reminder that he was the source of danger to everyone around him.

Sighing, he pushed away from the tree and back onto the path - only to be bowled over by a running boy.

Flabbergasted, Kei looked at the peasant who’d sent him to the rocky ground. “What the -”

“Sorry, sorry!” the boy - man? - said, looking down at something in his arms. “Are you ok? Please say you’re ok, it’ll be fine -”

“I’m not -” Kei started, then realized the boy wasn’t taking to him, but to - was that a cat? “Who the hell are you?”

“Eh?” the boy said, looking up at him for the first time. He had hazel eyes and a smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose. His hair flopped in his face and stuck up at strange angles. There was absolutely nothing remarkable about him.

Kei was captivated.

Then the boy’s eyes clouded over, and he looked back down. “I”m no one,” he said, pushing himself up. “Sorry for running into you but -”

“No one?” Kei said, suddenly angry. Was this some sort of joke? He stood as well, stalking towards the boy. “Do you know who I -”

The boy’s eyes widened in fear. “Oh no, they’re coming! Please - please - don’t tell them where I am - they want to drown him, already tried throwing the others in the river but they ran away but this one couldn’t run away, please just - don’t tell!” he said, driving into the bushes beside the path.

Kei blinked. What had just happened?

The sound of boots running down the path from the village distracted him from the now silent bush. A crowd of young men crested the hill.

“Where is he!” yelled one of them. “I swear if that good-for-nothing -”

Narrowing his eyes, Kei watched the group approach. This was who the boy had been running from? This ragtag band of vulgar idiots?

At first they glared at him, shouting out crude questions. Fortunately, their leader quickly realized that Kei was noble - well, fortunately for them.

“Excuse us, sir,” the man said, giving him a rough bow. “We’re chasing - ah - chasing a thief, yes. Have you happened to see anyone come this way?”

A thief?

Kei thought a moment, trying to decide who he believed more, these ruffians or the boy with the hazel eyes and the strangely silent cat. It wasn’t really that hard of a question, though. He pursed his lips, deciding that honesty was the best policy.

“No one came this way,” he said, keeping his amusement to himself.

The leader stared at him a moment, swallowing, then rounded on one of the shorter men. “You told me he came up this path -”

“I swear, I saws him!” the man said.

“If you would excuse me,” Kei cut in, “I was attempting to enjoy the view.”

The leader turned, mouth opening like he wanted to say something rude. Kei stared him down, though, and after a moment the peasant ducked his head and nodded. “Excuse us, sir. Won’t trouble you no more, sir, sorry about this.”

Kei nodded, breathing evenly as he watched the men slowly turn around and walk back down the path.

His hands were shaking.

Swallowing, he leaned back against the tree, casting his gaze on the bushes and meeting a pair of hazel eyes half-hidden in the leaves.

“Thief?” he asked.

The eyes looked down.

For a moment, Kei wondered if the unnamed boy would stay hidden. Then the boy spoke. “They're gone, right?” he asked.

“Down the path,” Kei said. “They won’t come back, I don’t think. Not unless they’re stupid.”

The boy laughed. “They are stupid,” he mumbled, and the bush shook as he crawled out from under it, one arm cradling the cat. “Stupid, but not suicidal, I think. M’lord. Sorry for not recognizing you were, uh. And running into you, sir, uh.”

Kei watched him as he stood, hunching over. It bothered him, for a reason he couldn’t name. It shouldn’t have bothered him. This was just a peasant, after all. A peasant who’d run into him. As the son of a duke, he was well within his rights to demand any retribution he wanted from him and his family in recompense - even his life.

“Are you a thief?” he asked.

The boy hesitated, then shrugged, still not looking up. “Anything I’ve ever stolen,” he mumbled, “was from people who’d already taken everything from me and my family. Does that make me a thief?”

The answer made Kei pause. He wasn’t prepared to debate ethics with a peasant. Really, he should take the boy down to the sheriff, let him sort it out. He could’ve called the crowd of men back, let them handle things. Could’ve just left.

He didn’t want to do any of those things, and it surprised him.

“Who are you?” he asked again, wishing to see those hazel eyes again.

The boy shifted from side to side, and then glanced up, giving him his wish. His lips were twisted, hiding some emotion Kei couldn’t place. “I told you, sir,” he murmured. “I’m no one. Nobody important. Just ...”

It irritated Kei suddenly, because it was both true and not true. He wasn’t unimportant. There was no reason for Kei to think he was important, though - he was just a boy, one of thousands, a boy who’d risked his life to save a mangy calico cat who hadn’t made a sound this whole time. It bothered him.

He scowled. He was being stupid. He was being sentimental. He was being impulsive.

Strangely enough, though, he found he didn’t care.

“You’re coming with me.”

~~~~~~~~~~

“Who’s this?” Hinata asked, jumping up as Kei and the stranger wandered back into camp.

“No one, evidently,” Kei said, trying to ignore Hinata’s wide eyes and the way Kageyama’s head lifted from the book he was reading.

“No one?” Kageyama asked, giving the boy a sharp look.

Kei sighed. “Of course not,” he muttered, tugging his necklace out and showing his cousin the still-bronze circle. “But there are some idiots chasing him and I didn’t want to just leave him out there. He won’t tell me his name, though.”

As expected, Hinata was bounding over to the boy, peppering him with questions. “Why won’t you tell him your name? Is it because he scared you? He come across that way but really he’s not so bad, you can tell us your name! We’re knights! Sworn to protect people! You’re safe with us! Oh wow, is that a cat?”

Narrowing his eyes at the two of them, Kei was torn between wanting to laugh at the cowering boy and wanting to rescue him from Hinata’s enthusiasm. Even more, though, he wanted to be alone, so he found a seat on one of the logs and contemplated the ground.

He had to admit to himself that a part of him had hoped beyond hope that the boy was his ‘no one.’ He’d even tugged the pendant out while they walked back to camp, wondering if it had magically turned clear after meeting the boy.

No such luck, though.

He looked up, staring at the boy. Boy. He was taller than Hinata. In actuality, he was probably the same age as them. Somehow, the cat had ended up in Hinata’s arms, and the boy’s hands were fluttering in the air like he didn’t know what to do with them.

Would he have wanted this boy to be his true love?

He was dirty and skinny. His clothes were tattered, his hair was a mess. No one. No matter his name, Kei knew that to his family and friends, a kid like this really would be no one.

But he felt drawn to him more than anyone else he’d ever met.

There was a rustling in the woods behind him and Kei turned, watching a large black cat with messy fur stalk out of the underbrush, followed by some others. It gazed at him a moment and then turned towards Hinata, yowling. The calico cat in Hinata’s arms gave a little huff and then squirmed, jumping down to pad over to the black cat and the others who had suddenly invaded the campsite. There was only one explanation for such a thing.

Frowning, Kei looked over at the boy. “You didn’t tell me they were magic cats,” he said.

The boy shrugged, a sheepish smile on his face. “Uh, well yeah. You didn’t ask.”

How troublesome.

~~~~~~~~

The boy’s name, it turned out, was Yamaguchi. And he wasn’t a peasant.

Well, not technically. He wasn’t from the village, at least. Kei was fairly certain that he was, in all actuality, a thief, though he claimed to be a storyteller or a magician or a minstrel or something like that. But he was awful at telling stories, stuttering his way through a haphazard attempt at one when Hinata pressed him after dinner that evening. He couldn’t think of any spells to cast, and he didn’t have an instrument. Still, the cats liked him.

Against everything reasonable, Kei liked him too.

There was something calming about his presence. It distracted Kei from his thoughts. He discovered that Yamaguchi had a sly sense of humor when he wasn’t the center of attention, often making Kei chuckle as he commented on Kageyama and Hinata’s interactions. He also didn’t seem to be overawed with the fact that he was now keeping company with nobles, either.

He joined them as they continued their travels, and it began to feel more like an adventure and less like a self-imposed exile with him around. The cats kept them company too, though they were more annoying. The calico seemed to have gotten attached to Hinata, much to Kageyama’s frustration. Half the time when Kei woke up the black cat was right there, tail wagging in his face. It liked to ride on his horse, too, hopping on the stallion’s rump behind Yamaguchi.

The horse didn’t seem to mind, though, and the solid presence of Yamaguchi at Kei’s back was normally distracting enough that he didn’t say anything. The cat didn’t interrupt their conversation as they rode, and that was all Kei really cared about. It was soothing to have someone to talk to. Yamaguchi was smart. Well-read in a haphazard way, with bits of knowledge so esoteric even Akiteru probably wouldn’t know them mixed in with gaps about even the most mundane of things. It raised more questions than answer for Kei, but he didn’t mind.

For the first time in his life, he was, perhaps, happy.

~~~~~~~

It took a few days for Kei to realize that he might not be the one determining where they were going.

One afternoon he was staring up a mountain range that had risen up in front of them, trying to remember why they had come this way. Kageyama pointed out that Kei was the one making the decisions. Hinata just shrugged. Yamaguchi stared at him like it should’ve been obvious.

Then for some reason he looked at the black cat, who looked far more smug and intelligent than a cat had a right to look, and remembered all the times when his horse had just happened to pick a certain fork in the road while he was busy talking with Yamaguchi.

“You -” he started to say, stopping when he realized he was on the verge of arging with a cat.

A magical cat, but still a cat.

Yamaguchi chuckled, and then said, “Well, did you have anywhere else you wanted to go?”

Kei just sighed, and they continued on.

~~~~~

That night, Yamaguchi sat away from the campfire, talking to a cat.

The whole pack always met them at their camp, even the ones who hadn’t ridden on a horse. Kei was most familiar with the black and the calico, but the one Yamaguchi was talking to was a light brown color.

For some reason, Yamaguchi looked sad.

Kei wanted to talk to him. Something held him back, though. After they went to bed he tried to fall asleep, but ended up just staring at the stars for hours. Turning to the side he saw Yamaguchi sitting against a tree, staring at something in his hands.

It was light blue, round and glinting in the dying firelight. A pendant, Kei realized. He’d never noticed Yamaguchi wore a pendant.

Curiosity plagued him, and Kei wanted to know more. More than that, though, he wanted to push away the sadness that sat on Yamaguchi’s shoulders like a mantle. It hurt him.

Between one blink and the next, though, he was no longer lying beside the campfire. Instead, he was sitting in a tall tree, looking out on rolling forests and moonlight.

It was beautiful.

“Do you love him?”

Kei looked to the side. There was a man sitting against the tree’s trunk, a man with messy black hair and a calico cat in his lap.

There were other men on the surrounding branches as well. A tall skinny man with gray hair and bright green eyes that glowed in the darkness. A man with strangely striped hair. Others crowded around, some with teeth too sharp for them to be human.

It struck Kei that he should be afraid, but he wasn’t.

“Do I love him?” Kei asked.

The man grinned, showing pointed canines. “You aren’t stupid. You know who I mean.”

This was a dream, Kei realized. A dream which the cats, for some reason, had decided to visit. “Maybe,” he said.

“But he isn’t anyone special, right? Just a nobody. A throw away. You wouldn’t even know who he was if it wasn’t for this one deciding to be lazy that day,” the man said, jabbing the side of the calico cat. It stared up at him, unimpressed.

“He’s not a nobody to me,” Kei murmured.

“Do you love him?”

Kei shrugged.

“Ah,” the man purred. “He might love you, human. Did you know? Though if he does, well. Too bad, too bad.”

Looking at him sharply, Kei asked, “What do you mean, too bad?”

The black-haired man’s smile just widened. “Hmm, who’s to know? Some secrets aren’t mine to tell, are they? Too bad....”

Kei blinked, and it was morning again, a morning that felt far too cold.

~~~~~~~~~

As he rolled out of bed, the black cat was nowhere to be found. Actually, none of the cats seemed to be around. For some reason, that made Kei annoyed. It was just a dream, though - magic or not, cats couldn’t actually invade dreams, could they?

To make matters worse, Kei’s horse had strained his foreleg.

“We probably need to take a rest anyway,” Kageyama said, looking from Kei to Yamaguchi. “Hinata and I will go hunting. If we are heading up into the mountains, game may be scarce. You stay here and switch the packs up to make sure everything we need is available.”

“Spoken like a true prince,” Kei snapped.

Kageyama huffed.

Really, there was no reason for Kei to purposefully antagonize his cousin. He knew he was sensitive to his status, knew that Kageyama was enjoying this reprieve from his responsibilities. Truth be told they were all surprised that riders from the castle hadn’t overtaken them, demanding he get home where it was safe.

Sighing, Kei turned and looked at Yamaguchi.

The question from the dream haunted him.

Did he love him?

Maybe.

His pendant still, stubbornly, refused to turn clear no matter how he felt, so what did it matter?

He puttered around the fire after Hinata and Kageyama left, stealing glances at Yamaguchi as they subtly ignored each other. Sometimes Kei caught Yamaguchi frowning as he looked at the mountain, his long-fingered hand touching his chest in a way that felt far too familiar to Kei.

Finally, he’d had enough.

“Can I talk to you?” he asked.

Yamaguchi looked at him and blinked. For a moment, Kei wondered if he’d been imagining the fact that Yamaguchi had been ignoring him.

Maybe the other man had just been lost in his own thoughts.

The smile Yamaguchi gave him was a shadow of its normal self, but it was genuine. “Sure,” he said.

Kei sat on his blankets near the fire. A shiver ran down his spine as Yamaguchi joined him, their legs pressed together. It didn’t mean anything. Yamaguchi had been far closer to him on the horse. This was somehow different, though.

Swallowing, Kei felt at a loss for words as Yamaguchi looked at him.

He suddenly realized he’d never really told a stranger about his fortune. People had always known about it. The truth was sometimes obscured, but even his friends found out the facts from someone else rather than confront him about it directly.

It felt almost intimate to share it with this man, doubly so because he wanted Yamaguchi to be his true love.

Finally, he just tugged the pendant out from under his shirt and leaned forward, showing it to him.

Raising an eyebrow, Yamaguchi leaned forward. “If Kei loves no one, then no one will be safe?” he asked.

Kei nodded.

For a moment, Yamaguchi looked confused, then he laughed. “Is that why you acted to strange when I said I was no one?”

“Well, yes.”

“How funny. Technically, you did keep me safe.”

“True,” Kei said. This close, he could see all the individual lines of color in Yamaguchi’s eyes, shades of forest green and deep brown. They were beautiful. How he’d ever thought this man was ordinary, he didn’t know.

Right now, though, the eyes were turning sad again. Yamaguchi turned the pendant over, rubbing a thumb along the design etched into the back.

“People ended up just paying attention to the last half of the fortune,” Kei said.

“No one will be safe?” Yamaguchi said, confused again until he scowled. “Really? People thought - gah, they’re so stupid.”

“Yeah,” Kei said. “My father regretted having them done for us. My older brother spent years pining after this girl who was a childhood friend of ours, while thinking his fortune would have him paired up with some big burly knight. It turned out she was the one for him in the end, but still.”

“Well, when people force a fortune -” Yamaguchi started, then stopped, ducking his head.

Kei thought he’d seen anger on his face before it was hidden. It made him thoughtful. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, and was reminded again that he didn’t know much about Yamaguchi’s past. Frowning, he sat back. “Do you have one?” he asked.

“Ah,” Yamaguchi said. He dropped Kei’s pendant, finger’s fiddling in his lap a moment before he nodded. “In a way, I guess.”

Raising an eyebrow Kei watched as Yamaguchi tugged at the laces of his shirt. The pendant he pulled out was not what Kei expected. For one thing, it was a blue stone instead of a metal disk. For another thing, it looked broken.

He didn’t know fortunes could be broken.

“Can I read it?” Kei asked, reaching for the pendant.

Yamaguchi nodded, handing it over.

‘Life over love, lose your name, lose your home. Love over life...’

Running his finger over the jagged edge, Kei wondered what else it had said. “Do you know?”

Tugging the pendant back, Yamaguchi said, “It doesn’t matter. I already made the choice.”

“Ah,” Kei said, hating the immense sorrow he could almost see wash over Yamaguchi’s frame.

Silence sat between them for a moment before Yamaguchi spoke again. “When I was five,” he whispered, “the raiders came. They were never supposed to find us. We stayed hidden, a few of us going out every year to sell their gifts, coming back with enough supplies and knowledge to keep the rest of us safe. But that year, someone got careless, and they followed her.”

Kei was reminded of the day they’d met when he’d asked Yamaguchi if he was a thief, and what he’d replied.

“I ran,” Yamaguchi said. “I’ll never forget. I was scared, and so I ran like a coward and hid in a tree. I could hear them screaming. Saw the men carting my sisters away. I should have gone with them, but I didn’t.”

“You were only five,” Kei said, wanting to reach out to him.

“What does it matter,” Yamaguchi said, “five, fifteen, twenty? In the end, my family was either dead or gone. The only one left alive besides me was my grandmother, and that was because they thought her dead. I crept down and found her the next morning, and my cousins came that afternoon, but it didn’t matter. They saw what had happened. This had broken, proving what I’d chosen - life over love. I was no longer welcome in our valley.”

“But - how could they -”

“I betrayed my family,” Yamaguchi said. “I was nameless, homeless - I don’t actually have a right to this name I’ve given you. My grandmother recovered and came with me, taught me what she could. It’s how I actually learned to read, learned to survive. She passed away a few years ago though.”

“And you’ve been alone ever since.”

“Well, in a way,” Yamaguchi said. “Except for the cats.”

“Ah yes, the cats,” Kei said, glancing around at the oddly empty clearing.

“It’s not so bad,” Yamaguchi said, pulling his shirt out and tucking his pendant away again. “I get to travel this way. The boys of my family don’t normally leave home.”

“Your tattoo,” Kei said, leaning forward and trying to catch a glimpse of the pattern on Yamaguchi’s chest. “It looks familiar?”

“Eh?” the boy said, tugging his laces close. “Aha, no, you’re probably mistaken.”

“Hmm,” Kei said, frowning. It had looked like webbing, and triggered some memory in him. Nothing he could place, however, and he’d already learned more about Yamaguchi’s past than he had a right to know. “Thank you for trusting me with the story.”

Yamaguchi shrugged, cheeks coloring a bit. “It’s not a big deal,” he muttered, hands fidgeting in his lap.

Kei couldn’t help himself. He placed a hand over those dancing fingers, squeezing them into calm. “It is,” he murmured, unable to find the words to say to express the whole of what he was feeling. To know that this man had been living through such things, when he’d grown up spoiled and pampered - sure, his life wasn’t always easy, but he’d never had to scramble for food. He’d been disliked, but never cast out, and his mother and brother and friends had all loved him.

How much time had he wasted feeling sorry for himself while Yamaguchi was curled up in some pathetic excuse for a shelter trying to make do with some stolen crust of bread for supper?

Yamaguchi wasn’t no one. Yamaguchi was precious. Suddenly Kei wanted to spend the rest of his life making sure Yamaguchi knew that. “I -” he started.

“I hope you find your true love someday,” Yamaguchi blurted, beating him to the punch. “Whoever this ‘no one’ is, they’re lucky.”

Kei wanted to yell his denial. He didn’t want anyone else. No - he wanted no one else. He felt no amusement at the pun, though, just a deep ache. Screw fate and fortune, screw disks that stubbornly refused to turn the right color, screw the broken stone pendant Yamaguchi thought sealed his fate, screw the raiders who’d stolen away all those whom Yamaguchi had loved.

Screw destiny. Kei would make his own fortune. Make his own home. Give Yamaguchi his own name, if he needed one.

There would never be anyone else.

But he knew without asking that Yamaguchi wasn’t ready to hear all that, so instead he just squeezed his hands, sitting with him until the two bumbling idiots came back to camp with supper.

~~~~~~~~~~

The mountains were cold.

Hinata got the sniffles. Kageyama got grumpy, and insisted that the redhead ride in front of him on his horse. Kei couldn’t blame him his protectiveness, though it was a bit amusing listening to them bicker back and forth when Kageyama’s words were more worried than annoyed.

Fortunately they all had some heavy blankets. The three from the castle had fur cloaks, and Kei insisted that Yamaguchi wear his, countering any complaints by pointing out that it would be wrapped around him as well when Yamaguchi f him on the horse. That was met with sighs but no protests, and a man who snuggled even closer than normal to make sure he stayed warm. Kei had no complaints.

Yamaguchi also ended up curling up with him in his blankets for warmth at night, another thing that Kei was not going to complain about. Granted, the cats for some reason decided to invade the bedding as well, but it was rather nice having warm balls of soft fur at his back while he held the man in his arms. Fortunately the black cat took to annoying Kageyama since the calico cat wouldn’t sleep with anyone but Hinata. It was the light brown cat that curled up in front of Yamaguchi’s stomach, keeping Kei’s hands warm while he held his beloved close.

Beloved. He liked that word.

If the cats showed up in his dreams again, he knew exactly how he’d answer the trickster’s question.

He didn’t dream in the mountains, though, at least not that he remembered. Long days of riding left him exhausted. The cats had led them off the beaten track and onto some small almost-invisible path. Yamaguchi got quieter the deeper they got into the passes, though Kei wasn’t sure if that was just because they were all tired and it was too cold to really talk while riding. They ended up falling asleep quickly after eating something, the scent of Yamaguchi’s hair chasing him into blackened dreams.

One night, though, a memory broke through the darkness.

He was kneeling beside iron bars at the bottom of an outer wall, looking into a cell. There was a woman there, looking up at him. He knew the woman. It was the woman who’d made his father so mad, the woman who’d given them their fortunes. Her long hair was gone, shaved close to her skull. Her pretty dress was torn too, gaping at the chest and showing skin covered with red marks.

She was smiling at him, though.

He’d been playing hide and seek. He wasn’t supposed to go around into this garden, none of the children were. He’d won that day though, he remembered. No one had even thought to look for him there. He’d come back again too, answering her questions even though she wouldn’t answer his.

It didn’t matter. He had liked her, hated the pain she tried to hide behind her smile. Been glad when he’d heard she’d escaped, even if it made his father even angrier.

That day, though, he remembered that day.

“Do you want to love, boy?” she’d asked him.

“Of course,” he’d replied.

“How do you choose who you love?”

He’d been stymied for a while. It was a complex question for him, and she hadn’t helped him out any either. In the end, he’d just said, “I’m not sure how to choose.”

“Could you love someone like me?” she’d asked.

That had been a stupid question. Or maybe not, because it took the question being asked for him to realize he already did, a little - even though the woman made his father angry, made Akiteru worried, had given him something no one could make sense of. “Of course,” he’d answered.

“So young,” she’d murmured, then said, “I’m glad.”

Such a strange memory to surface in a dream.

He heard her exhale, saw sunlight glint through the bars and play over her chest, remembered -

Faint blue lines etched there, in a pattern that looked like webbing.

Sucking in a breath he woke, freezing cold and arms empty.

The calico cat was sitting in front of him, eyes glinting gold.

“Yamaguchi,” Kei whispered.

The cat just blinked at him.

Kei stood, following the calico cat to the edge of the camp. The black cat was sitting on a pile of rocks near the edge, tail curled into a question mark.

“Yes,” Kei told him, scowling. “Yes, I do.”

Huffing what might have been a laugh, the black cat hopped down and started walking into the wilderness, calico cat not far behind. Kei followed them.

The moon was full and he was shivering, glad he’d at least brought the blanket they’d wrapped up in before going to sleep.

He was glad of the light from the moon as well, because there were rocks in his path that threatened to turn his ankle.

Hopefully, Yamaguchi wasn’t too far ahead.

The trail curved, winding through stunted tree groves and up to an invisible cleft in the rock. It was wide enough to ride a horse through, but perfectly camouflaged from where they’d been before. Kei wasn’t surprised.

Some secrets were supposed to be hidden. Some secrets he’d keep to himself until he died, if they would keep the people he loved safe.

His pendant felt warm against his chest. It was the only warm thing around him. His toes, fingers, nose, ears - all were frozen. None of that mattered, though, when he came around a bend in the cleft of rock and saw Yamaguchi standing before a dark-robed figure who carried a lantern. Broken stone pillars and shadows lay behind the figure, echoes of some ancient civilization.

“You are not allowed here, nameless one,” the figure said.

“I know,” replied Yamaguchi.

“Then why have you come? And come bringing outsiders?”

“They’re asleep! I made sure of that, put the powder in their stew tonight before I left. They won’t even know I’m gone. But I had to come. The cats brought me here. They knew I had to come,” Yamaguchi said.

“Cats,” the figure replied, voice harsh. “What do cats know.”

Kei raised an eyebrow as the two cats in front of him exchanged a glance.

“They knew,” Yamaguchi said, “that it was time for me to come back.”

“You have no place here.”

“But grandmother does!” Yamaguchi said, pulling a bag from the pocket in his trousers. “Please. Please, just bear her to rest with the ancestors, as is her due.”

“She left the valley. She made her choice.”

“She chose love.”

“She broke the rules!”

“Love over life!” Yamaguchi retorted. “Love for me, over her life here. Love for her daughter and granddaughters, in case we could find them in the world outside.”

“And did you?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Failure,” the figure said, stepping closer. “Nothing. You are no one to us.”

Kei hated the person, whoever they were, for talking to his Yamaguchi that way. As they moved closer, light glinted off metal.

“No,” Kei whispered, starting forward.

The figure paused, one hand outstretched toward the bag, hooded face pointed in Kei’s direction. “Traitor - you said! You led them right to us?”

“What?” Yamaguchi said, spinning, eyes wide as he saw Kei. “No. Oh no, oh no.”

All Kei saw was the knife raised up. He ran, wishing he’d brought his sword with him from the camp, wishing he had something - anything - to defend them with. Time stretched as Yamaguchi ran to him.

“You can’t! Take me, kill me, I don’t care, you’re right, I’m nothing,” Yamaguchi said, turning to stand with arms outstretched, “but don't harm him! He means no harm! I love him!”

“No,” Kei said, pulling at him, twisting them around, feeling Yamaguchi fall behind him. He turned and tripped, one hand catching himself on the ground and the other raised to face the attack head on. “Don’t you dare hurt him. You’ve done enough of that, you - you monsters - casting out a child - you don’t deserve him!”

The knife slipped past his flailing hand and fell towards his chest and all Kei could think was that he hadn’t told Yamaguchi he loved him.

There was a soft clang as the tip hit something hard.

No pain.

In the shadows of the hood, Kei thought he saw a smile.

“You’re right. We don’t deserve him. But maybe - just maybe - you do.”

“What?!” Yamaguchi squawked.

The knife tugged at his shirt and Kei looked down, seeing the sparkle of crystal through the tear in the cloth. It took a moment for the significance to seep through, and then he smiled. “Safe.”

“Yes,” the woman replied - for the figure was a woman.

She pulled her hood back and Kei’s eyes widened in shock. “You,” he whispered.”

“Sister?”

“Yes,” she said. Kei recognized her from his dream, though there was now a long scar on her cheek, and she was older.

“But -” Yamaguchi said.

“I escaped,” she replied, sheathing the knife. “Several years ago. It took me a while to piece together what happened. We’d lost track of you by then.”

Kei watched, bemused, feeling Yamaguchi beat on his shoulder and finally realizing he was probably squishing the other man into the rock. He moved.

“Thank you,” Yamaguchi murmured to him. “I still don’t -”

“The men who captured me took me around, using me to sell fortunes until I told the destinies of Duke Tsukishima’s sons - your friend and his brother. The duke was less than pleased with what I wrote, so he imprisoned me. His eldest son freed me,” the woman said. The woman, Yamaguchi’s sister. “I mean, I helped him cover his tracks, but he was a good kid. He’s happy now, I take it?”

Nodding, Kei leaned closer to Yamaguchi’s warmth, intertwining their fingers. “Did you know?” he asked. “Did you know that my destiny was...”

“Hmm,” she said, a faint smile playing over her lips as she looked between them. “I wonder.”

Yamaguchi squeezed his fingers and Kei looked down, wondering if he imagined the shadow that still rested in the depths of his beloved’s gaze.

“We sent the cats out to find you,” the woman said, “but you know how cats are. They always do things in their own time.”

“Better than either human time or fateling time,” a new voice sang out, and Kei turned his head to see the dark-haired man from his dream, arms slung around the shoulders of a shorter man with two-tone hair. The new man looked rather bored with everything that was going on. He had glowing golden eyes. “Besides, you all are the ones who screwed this whole thing up to begin with, and see? Everything has turned out alright in the end.”

“Yes, yes,” the woman said waving her hand.

“But if you knew,” Kei said, “If you were looking for him - why were you going to kill him?”

At this, the woman looked a bit embarrassed. “I wasn’t going to kill him! It was all just for - you know -”

“Fateling females get a little dramatic sometimes,” said the dark-haired man, grinning before he winced in pain at something the shorter man had done.

“Huh,” Kei said, raising an eyebrow and turning back to the woman. “Dramatic.”

“Oh please,” she said. “You’d get dramatic too, if you had to spend years dealing with stupid humans! And besides, this way their destinies are fulfilled.”

“But,” Yamaguchi said, “I don’t have a destiny, I broke it -”

“But you do,” the woman said, kneeling down and reaching out to tug on the chain. “You do, Tadashi. See? It was always there. It was just hidden for a while, but it was always there.”

His necklace had changed into a crystal circle as well. Kei leaned closer to read the lines. “Life over love, lose your name, lose your home. Love over life, find your heart, be our light,” he murmured.

Yamaguchi looked down, eyes wide. “Oh,” he said.

Kei smiled at him. “Can I be your heart?”

Hazel eyes blinked at him rapidly, and Yamaguchi nodded, making Kei laugh.

“No kissing in front of your sister!” the woman squeaked.

A look of determination entered Yamaguchi’s eyes before he proceeded to ignore her in a very thorough manner.

To be honest, Kei did not mind one bit.

For a few moments, at least, the night wasn’t cold at all.

~~~~~~~

When Hinata and Kageyama woke the next morning, they were greeted by the sight of Kei, Yamaguchi, two very human cats, and one of Yamaguchi’s cousins. The girl looked terrified, but also a bit excited as she greeted the prince and his consort.

“Pleased to meet you!” she yelled out, bowing formally.

Yamaguchi squeezed Kei’s fingers, and Kei squeezed back.

It had been a long night.

Kei had learned that the dark-haired cat’s name was Kuroo, and he was as bothersome in human form as he was as a cat. Kind, though. Strangely kind, despite his off-putting demeanor. 

The shorter man was the calico cat, of course - Kenma. Kenma was quiet, but when he spoke it was something of significance.  

The humans who’d known how to find the valley had been tracked down and taken care of by the cats - though there was some ambiguity as to what that meant. He didn’t really pretend to understand the relationship between the cats and Yamaguchi’s people, but he did know they had become much more protective ever since the incident with Yamaguchi’s family.

The humans who’d raided had evidently decided that they had the right to control the women who gave out fortunes. Kei had to wonder how much his father had known about the arrangement. He was certain his mother would never have condoned such a thing.

As far as Kei was concerned, it could never happen again. He’d do his best to make sure it never did.

It amazed him that the fatelings would even think of leaving their valley after what had happened.

“It’s our nature, though!” Yachi had said. “We have to speak, or the words just get all - all bubbled up inside! And whispering to the water only does the trick for so long. Besides, not all humans are bad.”

She had such hope.

Kei couldn’t fault her for that, though, especially not when Yamaguchi seemed to blossom in her company. He’d thought the man beautiful for a while now, but he preferred this glowing version to the man who’d grown ever quieter in his arms the past few days.

His arms. His beloved. His destiny.

No one no more.

Even the writing on Kei’s pendant had changed.

‘If Kei loves Tadashi, then Tadashi will be safe,’ it now read - and Kei vowed to spend his life making sure it was true.

Yamaguchi would be safe, because Yamaguchi was his.

Yamaguchi would be safe, and his people would be safe. From the looks on Hinata and Kageyama’s faces as they listened to an edited version of the story, Kei was fairly certain the fatelings had an ally in the future king as well. And when they went home, they’d have Daichi’s group and the other people at court - though how the castle was going to deal with an invasion of felines Kei wasn’t sure.

Oh well. That would be Kageyama’s problem, not his. Judging from the way Hinata was staring at Kenma, things would probably be fine.

Maybe.

Some random thought flitted through Kei’s mind questioning what would happen when Kuroo met Akaashi’s boyfriend, but decided to ignore it. That wouldn’t be his problem either.

His only problem right now was figuring out more and more ways to make Yamaguchi happy.

Judging from the smile on his face as he looked up at him, so far Kei thought he was doing a pretty good job.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Comments always welcome :) 
> 
> Follow me (or come chat with me!) on tumblr at <http://kaiyouchan.tumblr.com>


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